un-equal load balancing question over 2 circuits (T1 and 1/2 T1)?

[jrhofman]

Anyone have a good option for load balancing over two un-equal sized circuits between two routers. I have a T1 and a 1/2 T1 between two routers.

Multilink PPP

EIGRP (un-equal cost load balancing)

CEF

any insights would be helpful....

[Richard Burts]

James

My first comment is that I do not see CEF as a separate option in this question. If you use EIGRP it will by default run with CEF. I suspect that part of what you are trying to get at is the question of per-destination or per-packet load share. I have an opinion and that is that per-packet sounds good but introduces more problems than it is worth. This is especially true in terms of out of sequence packets.

If you really want proportionate use of both links then I would lean toward using MLPPP. If you are comfortable with some slight inequity in the balancing of the links then I would prefer to use EIGRP (with CEF) on the basis that it is easier to configure, slightly less overhead, and easier to troubleshoot if something does not work as expected.

And the option that you did not list was to configure two static routes, one for each link. I think that is not a good solution and am glad that you did not list it as a possibility.

HTH

Rick

[jackyoung]

If two links are not equipped w/ same bandwidth, I could like to recommend manual load-sharing instead of auto, it was because it will be easily to cause one link overloaded and the other link at low utilization.

Hope this helps.